EMOM (Every Minute On the Minute) Workout Drills

Today I want to start a series on the common types of drills you’ll find in bootcamp workouts.

As a new trainer it can often be really difficult to try to come up with a workout that works well with a whole group of people from all walks of life. What you might not realise is that us experienced trainers have many tricks and drills up our sleeves for just these occasions.

Let me introduce you to one such trick, EMOM drills

EMOM is an acronym for Every Minute On the Minute. (It is not a type of Mom that you send through the internet.)

What you’ll need

You’ll need a timer or timer app to keep track of time.

How they work

Set a timer to go off every minute, on the minute.

You can do as many rounds as you like. 5 minutes up to 20 minutes works well as long as there is some variation in the exercises.

At the start of each minute clients will complete a sprint or an exercise or a series of exercises. Their goal is to complete it as fast as possible because whatever time they have left before the next minute starts, they get as rest.

For example: Clients need to sprint to a cone 25m away and back each minute. Tony sprints and comes back, it takes him 25 seconds. That means he now has 35 seconds to rest before the buzzer goes off again.

EMOMs are great for groups because they use time, so while people will work at their own pace, everyone will finish the drill at the same time.

I usually use EMOMs with ladder drills, low reps or short distance running. I’ll share some more examples at the end of this post.

Variations

Longer rounds: EMOMs don’t need to always be 1 minute rounds. You might do every second minute on the minute so that they can get more done in each round.

Mash ups: Rather than doing the same thing each round, have each round be a different exercise/drill.

For example: Minute 1: Sprint, Minute 2: 20 KB Swings, Minute 3: 12 HRPU, Minute 4: back to sprints.

Use with other drills: Add a bit of chaos to your workout. You could have a circuit where every 5 minutes on the minute clients have to drop and do 5 burpees before continuing on with the circuit.

Example

Deconstructed Burpee

Here is a really basic example of an EMOM drill, clients complete 5 reps of each exercise each minute for 5 minutes. That’s 5 rounds total.

Exercises:

1. 5x HRPU
2. 5x Squat Thrust
3. 5x Vertical Jumps

You could make this harder by increasing the reps of each exercise by 1 each round.

More examples:

• ZombieFit – 20 minute EMOM with increasting reps
• Skip Up, Get Up – tough mash up EMOM of TGU and jumping rope
• EMOM Pyramid – a partner workout with ladders and shuttles
• Crest The Hill – sprints, burpees and hills, E MOM!
• Hells Bells – for those that use kettlebells